2024-07-25 15:23:09
Transfer fee demanded
Traffic light coalition wants to end payments of state benefits to churches
Updated on 19.07.2024Reading time: 3 min.
The Protestant and Catholic churches receive hundreds of millions of euros from the state every year. The reason for this goes back more than 200 years. But the traffic light coalition now wants to put an end to this.
Less state support for churches: Representatives of the traffic light coalition want to replace state support for churches. Hundreds of millions of euros are at stake every year.
The deputy leader of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, told the Evangelical Press Service: “It is and remains in the interest of all those involved, the states as well as the churches, to finally fulfil the constitutional mandate after well over 100 years.”
The SPD parliamentary group’s representative for churches and religious communities, Lars Castellucci, added: “In view of the number of people leaving the church, state benefits can be justified less and less in the long term.” The FDP’s religious policy spokeswoman, Sandra Bubendorfer-Licht, expects that an early replacement would be more advantageous in the medium term than a continuation of state benefits.
After all, we are talking about considerable sums of money. According to Domradio, the 27 Catholic dioceses and 20 Protestant regional churches received around 638 million euros in state benefits in 2023. 60 percent of this went to the Protestant regional churches.
The background to the payments is the so-called Imperial Deputation Act of 1803. It stipulated that princes who had lost territories due to the conquests of the French Emperor Napoleon should be compensated. In return, numerous church properties were expropriated and distributed to the princes, who in return committed themselves to regular maintenance payments.
These grants were later taken over by the German states, were incorporated into the Weimar Constitution and were also included in the Basic Law after the Second World War, each time with the stated aim of replacing them. This has not happened so far. Since reunification, churches in East Germany have also been receiving payments again. Small communities here are also dependent on the funds to pay salaries, reports Domradio.
A replacement does not mean that the payments will be cancelled immediately without replacement. Instead, compensation payments up to a certain amount are conceivable.
The problem: There is disagreement about what amount would be appropriate and in what form it should be paid (more on this here). One-off payments or installment payments are conceivable. The federal government must create the legal framework for such a compensation, but the states then negotiate the specific conditions, as they are responsible for the payments. These disagreements have repeatedly led to corresponding applications failing in the past.
Experts generally point out that the churches have already been adequately compensated. In the last legislative period, an expert report was also obtained on this issue, which also came to this conclusion.
Meanwhile, church tax is not affected by the debate about state benefits. The ability of churches to raise money in this way is also regulated in the Basic Law. For a fee, Germany provides the structure of the tax offices for this purpose. It makes up a much larger part of church finances; in 2022, around 13 billion euros were raised with it. Of this, 6.8 billion euros went to the Catholic Church and 6.1 billion euros to the Protestant Church. Read here how church tax is calculated.
Also not affected are state subsidies for the assumption of public tasks by church bodies, such as the operation of kindergartens, schools, hospitals and nursing homes.